I am writing to express my extreme outrage at the ham-handed efforts of Montpelier Mayor Hollar, as reported in The Times Argus, to squelch city employee Gwen Hallsmith’s advocacy of a state bank to serve the public interests in Vermont.

How can this be regarded as anything but corrupt when we learn that the mayor is a fat-cat lawyer on the payroll as a lobbyist for Bank of America and Wells Fargo? These are two of the big banks that were responsible, because of their reckless and greedy financial wheeling and dealing, for the deep economic crisis we are still stuck in.

With the establishment of a state bank by the Legislature, the out-of-state big banks operating here in Vermont would finally have a little bit of competition where financial speculation and the enrichment of the 1 percent is not the bottom line, and that’s something they would no doubt like to prevent.

My feeling is that both of these “too-big-to-fail” banks, along with the rest of them, should be deep-sixed — and so should the mayor at the next Montpelier election.